One of the most diverse islands on the planet, Hawaii Island plays host to all but two of the world’s ecosystems, including active volcanoes. GP contributor Will McGough summits Kilauea Crater for a firsthand look inside the Devil’s Kitchen.

The Chevrolet Corvette is a car that was spawned in the years after WWII when servicemen were returning from Britain with MGs, Jaguars and other lightweight sports cars designed for twisty roads and sunny afternoons. The extraordinary popularity of these vehicles didn’t go unnoticed by America’s domestic marques and many had prototypes in the production pipeline by 1950.

The hand-built EX-122 pre-production Corvette prototype was first shown to the general public at the 1953 GM Motorama at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York in early 1953. Production began just 6 months later, this compressed timeline led to some issues with the first series of Corvettes and very nearly resulted in the model line being discontinued before it had even had a chance to take off.

In 1956 Zora Arkus-Duntov was appointed director of high-performance vehicle design and development for Chevrolet, in this role he overhauled the struggling Corvette and turned it into a world class sports car. This quickly earned him the nickname “Father of the Corvette” and he’s widely credited with both saving the model and turning it into the vehicle it is today.

By 1960 the Corvette had established itself as a car to be reckoned with, even in Europe against the likes of Austin-Healey, Jaguar, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Maserati.

The most highly sought after was the model you see here – fitted with the 270hp 283 cubic inch V8 with dual 4-barrel Carter carburettors, a 4-speed manual transmission, independent front suspension with unequal length A-arms, coil springs and sway bar, a live rear axle with semi-elliptic springs and four-wheel hydraulic drum brakes.

Due to be auctioned on the 10th of May in Monaco this year, this immaculately restored 1960 Chevrolet Corvette has been restored to Top Flight condition and now has an estimated hammer price of just €90,000 to €110,000 – making it one of the cheapest cars to take part in the auction.

For those of you who watch Formula 1, Martin Brundle needs no introduction. The former Formula 1 driver is now the lead commentator on Sky Sports, remarkably his commentating career began 17 years ago beside the legendary Murray Walker on ITV Sport in 1997.

Skip forward to 2014 and Brundle is now the only commentator any serious Formula 1 fan wants to listen to, an untold number of people outside of Britain (and the reach of Sky Sports) clamour to find any online stream they can of his coverage – only resorting to using their local commentators when absolutely necessary.

What many of Brundle’s current fans don’t know is that he entered Formula 1 as a driver in 1984 – the same year as Ayrton Senna. The two men had battled it out in Formula 3 during the 1983 season with Ayrton only winning the championship on the last few laps of the last race – Ayrton had great respect for Brundle, which itself is possibly the greatest nod of approval any racing driver from the era could possibly receive. Brundle would go on to win the 1988 World Sportscar Championship with a record points score before taking a swing at endurance racing and winning the 1990 24 Hours of Le Mans race for Jaguar.

When it comes to his own personal cars, Martin has owned a slew of classics that many would kill for, including 2 of my personal favourites – the Ferrari F355 and the E-Type Jaguar. In fact he’s owned 2 E-Types, a Series III V12 Roadster and a Series I Coupe. He impulse bought the Series III on sight, something that many of us would have done years ago if we had the money and the opportunity. Years later he decided that the convertible was a little too exposed – probably because he has one of the most famous faces in Britain, and so he approached the team at Eagle to build him a Series I Coupe.

As with all Eagle E-Types Brundle’s coupe would be a tweaked, improved car that would be more than capable of rubbing shoulders with modern sports couples – a feat many classic cars genuinely struggle with. The straight-6 was reworked to produce a little over 300hp at the rear wheels, it was fitted with a 5-speed transmission, modified suspension geometry, an entirely new interior and a modern air-conditioning system.

Impressively, Brundle uses either his E-Type, his BMW K1600GT or his helicopter to travel to the Formula 1 races in Europe – in fact, he’s now attended almost half the Grand Prix races that have ever taken place worldwide.

The story of the Bizzarrini 5300 GT reads like a political thriller set in ancient Rome – there was intrigue, deception, political posturing and even a death before a small number of the cars were produced. Shortly after the last car rolled out of the workshop the Bizzarrini went bust and was relegated to working as a consultant – as he had done for both Ferrari and Lamborghini in the years before the 5300 GT came to be.

The Bizzarrini 5300 GT essentially a started life as an Iso Grifo – a car that had been designed by Giotto Bizzarrini and Giorgietto Giugiaro for Renzo Rivolta in 1963. Bizzarrini was famous for his obsession with weight distribution and as a result of this obsession he liked to position the engine as far back in the chassis as possible. In the Iso Grifo AC3/C this meant that the engine was so far back you had to access the distributor through a door on the dashboard and the pedals were positioned about halfway down the engine block – leading to the car being compared unfavourably with an oven.

There was much discord between Rivolta and Bizzarrini, the former wanted to focus on building road cars and the latter only wanted to go racing. By the time Renzo Rivolta died in 1965 Bizzarrini’s relationship with the executives at Iso was so strained that he decided to leave and pursue his dream of having his own name on an automobile.

Production of the Bizzarrini 5300 GT began in 1966 and continued till 1968, due to the somewhat Italian bookkeeping it’s not known how many cars were built but most automotive historians estimate the number between 100 and 149. Of these, it’s thought that approximately 70 were build with the full aluminium alloy body – these cars are the most highly valued by collectors and their prices at auction have been seeing a significant bump in recent years.

The Bizzarrini 5300 GT you see here recently underwent a full concours restoration which included to installation of a discreet air-conditioning system – an essential addition for a grand tourer. In 2011 it sold for €400,000 but it’s estimated that it’ll fetch roughly 20% more than that when it rolls across the auction block with RM Auctions on the 10th of May 2014.